Saturday, June 18, 2011

"Okay, guys, you remember what I said about straw purchasers? Well, forget it. It just didn't work out, in case you hadn't noticed."

Over the electronic transom I received this document issued Monday by Eric Holder regarding "Law Enforcement Strategies for Reducing Gun Violence." Although I received it pdf form, I transcribed it to shield the source of this document from easy trace.

You will note that this memo is dated the same day as the first Gunwalker hearing, and reverts to the old policy of catching straw buyers and rolling them, something the agents at Wednesday's hearing bitterly complained that they were not allowed to do under Gunwalker.

Irony compounded.

Office of the Attorney GeneralWashington, D.C. 20530

June 13, 2011

MEMORANDUM TO ALL UNITED STATES ATTORNEYS

CC: DIRECTOR, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL, CRIMINAL DIVISION

ADMINISTRATOR, DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION

DIRECTOR, U.S. MARSHALS SERVICE

ACTING DIRECTOR, BUREAU OF ALCOHOL, TOBACCO, FIREARMS & EXPLOSIVES

FROM: The Attorney General (MBV: Initialed in blue ink, "E H")

SUBJECT: Law Enforcement Strategies for Reducing Gun Violence

The events in Tuscon in January and the continued upsurge in shootings of law enforcement officers serve as painful reminders that too many innocent citizens die senselessly each year at the hands of dangerous and violent individuals armed with a gun. Over the past five years, 67 percent of homicides in the United States have been committed with firearms. And too often, these gun crimes occur at the hands of persons who are prohibited from possessing firearms. Over the last several months, the Department has conducted numerous firearm policy meetings with outside stakeholders, including law enforcement officials, representatives from state and local governments, and firearms retailers, to discuss common sense approaches that will help keep guns out of the hands of criminals and others for whom possession of a firearm is against the law.

Last July at the Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) Conference in New Orleans, I outlined the Department's committment to modernizing our violent crime strategy and emphasized that enforcement, prevention, and re-entry must be the cornerstones of that strategy. The AGAC outlined this strategy in a November 2010 memo to all U.S. Attorneys. The U.S. Attorney community has always been at the forefront of the Department's anti-violence strategies, working with state, local and tribal officials to devise community-based anti-violence solutions. Our Federal investigative are integral to these efforts.

As your AUSAs work to implement the anti-violence strategy outlined last year, you should endeavor to heighten awareness of gun-related crime and the unique factors that cause it in your respective districts, and continue to work with state, tribal and local counterparts to identify the communities in which gun violence persists. Each District-specific anti-violence strategy should implement, in those communities, the enforcement, prevention and re-entry programs that will be most effective at reducing gun violence. As we approach the end of the school year and the warm summer months, our enforcement and prevention efforts will become even more important.

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As we work to refine our strategies in this way, certain features of the most successful programs -- such as stepped-up enforcement against the most violent offenders, targeted enforcement in "hot spot" areas, and creative prevention and re-entry initiatives -- can and should be exported and adapted as best practices throughout the nation. I have begun mobilizing all available resources and expertise within the Department to support the adoption of those best practices.

Of course, we must focus not only on investigating and prosecuting violent crimes committed with guns, but also on stopping violent criminals from getting guns in the first place. Our violent crime strategies must therefore address both the criminals from getting guns in the first place. Our violent crime strategies must therefore address both the criminals who unlawfully possess and use firearms and the "straw purchasers" and other firearms traffickers who supply those criminals with guns.

In this regard, we encourage each district to carefully review recent enhancements to the Sentencing Guidelines that are aimed at "straw purchasers." The Sentencing Commission has amended the primary firearms guidline, S2K2.1, to increase penalties for straw purchasers whose offense of conviction is making false statements but who engage in the offense with knowledge, intent or reason to believe that the offense would result in the transfer of a firearm to a prohibited person. Under the newly-approved amendment, the base offense level will increase from 12 to 14 so that straw purchasers have the same base offense level as a straw purchaser convicted for knowingly distributing a firearm or ammunition to a prohibited person. The amendments to the guidlines also include higher penalties for straw purchasers who are involved with certain especially dangerous firearms and for those gun offenders involved in moving guns across the border. In the absence of Congressional actions, these enhancements recommended by the Sentencing Commission will go into effect in November, but in appropriate cases they can and should be brought to the court's attention now, as potentially relevant to a particular sentence.

In addition, the Department is undertaking an effort to coordinate multi-district gun-trafficking investigations in both source and market districts. These districts will be identified using ATF trace data. The aim is to dismantle firearms trafficking organizations and shut down the pipeline of illegal guns by improving our ability to share evidence and leads between law enforcement at both ends of the supply chain. As a part of that effort, the Criminal Division's Organized crime and Gang Section will be working with the United States Attorney's Offices and ATF in market districts and corresponding source districts to pursue coordinated investigations that utilize the resources, intelligence, and evidence found in both the source and market areas.

Finally, to enhance our ability to detect, investigate, and prosecute violent criminals and the traffickers who supply them with guns, I am further instructing each of you to implement a policy in your District to ensure that defendants who proffer in cases involving guns, drugs, gangs, or acts of violence are thoroughly debriefed about gun crime and gun trafficking, including the sources of illegal guns, and to ensure that relevant information obtained from these debriefings is shared with ATF for further investigation as appropriate. Whether the information obtained during such debriefings constitutes substantial assistance is of course a determination to be made by prosecutors in accordance with District and Department policies. Many of you

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already encourage your AUSAs to debrief such individuals about gun crime; these debriefings should now be mandatory, and the information developed should be shared with your ATF field offices. Such debriefings will help ensure that we are maximizing our efforts to develop and utilize intelligence and evidence about gun crime in each district.

I appreciate your cooperation and your help with this important endeavor, one that can help communities and save lives. I also will appreciate knowing about your District's experiences with the initiatives outlined in this memorandum so that the Department may learn from your work in this area and your successes.

One of the agents (a former homicide detective no less) that testified complained very vocally that this is exactly what they WEREN'T allowed to do. Interesting that the U.S. Attorney who's office prevented those techniques from being used was Janet Napolitano's Chief of Staff while she was Arizona Governor...

"67 percent of homicides in the United States have been committed with firearms. And too often, these gun crimes occur at the hands of persons who are prohibited from possessing firearms."

Sounds like they are admitting gun control laws are useless. Maybe if they tried making gun possession REALLY REALLY illegal? Are they playing some elaborate drama, or are they actually that oblivious?

holder (as usual) is wrong out of the gate: there is NO SUCH THING as 'Gun Violence' - a gun is an inanimate thing and hence incapable of perpetrating any sort of HUMAN act. Until they revise their thinking and start putting the blame on the human actors their efforts will NOT succeed.

Anyone here familiar with Project First Strike in Richmond? Seems a real AUSA there came up with the idea a while back that if you had ever been convicted on any crime and used a gun in a subsequent crime - bingo - automatic 10 yrs (no parole) in federal pen. Thats in addition to whatever other time you got - and no serving the time concurrently either.

Perhaps the 'brain trust' at DoJ and other places ought look at things like that - nah - won't happen - makes too much sense

He is not a fool. How copy over? Underestimation has got us where we are now.

You have to understand that none of this is happenstance, it is a plan and plans must be executed by people, even if they don't know it's a plan. Mr. Holder does and is acting to complete the mission which is not simply "gun controls and bans".

My Blog List

Advice on child rearing from my son.

Everyone should grow up with simulated equipment from a heavy weapons platoon. It gives you a more well rounded education and an appreciation for the finer things in life. -- Sergeant Matthew Vanderboegh, United States Army.

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

On the efficacy of passive resistance in the face of the collectivist beast. . .

Had the Japanese got as far as India, Gandhi's theories of "passive resistance" would have floated down the Ganges River with his bayoneted, beheaded carcass. -- Mike Vanderboegh.

In the future . . .

When the histories are written, “National Rifle Association” will be cross-referenced with “Judenrat.” -- Mike Vanderboegh to Sebastian at "Snowflakes in Hell"

"Smash the bloody mirror."

If you find yourself through the looking glass, where the verities of the world you knew and loved no longer apply, there is only one thing to do. Knock the Red Queen on her ass, turn around, and smash the bloody mirror. -- Mike Vanderboegh

From Kurt Hoffman over at Armed and Safe.

"I believe that being despised by the despicable is as good as being admired by the admirable."

From long experience myself, I can only say, "You betcha."

"Only cowards dare cringe."

The fears of man are many. He fears the shadow of death and the closed doors of the future. He is afraid for his friends and for his sons and of the specter of tomorrow. All his life's journey he walks in the lonely corridors of his controlled fears, if he is a man. For only fools will strut, and only cowards dare cringe. -- James Warner Bellah, "Spanish Man's Grave" in Reveille, Curtis Publishing, 1947.

"We fight an enemy that never sleeps."

"As our enemies work bit by bit to deconstruct, we must work bit by bit to REconstruct. Be mindful where we should be. Set goals. We fight an enemy that never sleeps. We must learn to sleep less." -- Mike H. at What McAuliffe Said

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.